This Will Be the Omake
by DezoPenguin
Summary: A collection of drabbles and humor fics too short to stand as one-shots starring the cast of RWBY. May include both stories set in canon and AUs.
1. At Least She Didn't Start Schneezing

**Omake Week 2014, Day 4:** _I don't actually have an omake collection for _RWBY_, this in fact being the first true omake I've ever writtenfor the series. Perhaps this will be the start of a trend!_

~X X X~

Weiss Schnee was not a morning person.

In fact, Weiss Schnee was the kind of person about whom folks that dredged themselves out of bed at the sound of a blazing alarm, shambled zombie-like to the kitchen where by pure instinct they operated the coffee maker and slurped down enough caffeine that they could, with surly mumbling, prepare themselves for the day and stagger out the door with just enough energy to get to the coffee shop for their second cup would say, "Wow, she's really not a morning person!"

Since coming to Beacon Academy and joining Team RWBY, though, Weiss had become an early riser. Thus, when one morning she found her eyelids fluttering as she gently eased from sleep into wakefulness, her body happy and content with the small amount of rest it had gotten, she was very confused. _Am I back home? No, there's Blake and Yang's bunk beds over there, and Yang's poster on the wall…_

This was very strange. Yang Xiao Long was a loud person, but usually had the social finesse to only crash about and wake up sleeping people when she actually wanted to do so. As for Blake Belladonna, well, she was as quiet as some very quiet thing that someone would mention in an obviously tortured attempt to avoid comparing Blake to a cat. But Ruby Rose was a completely different story. Ruby would inevitably be up, bright and peppy and full of energy, while dawn was still doing its warm-up stretches in preparation for the crack of dawn. And then she'd drag her team awake, hauling them all up and out of bed with shouts and cheers and whistles blown two inches from a sleeping person's ear (and thank Dust that Aura protected against hearing loss), exclaiming all the while that a beautiful day was being wasted. She was like some mutant superweapon designed by a team of mad scientist roosters.

Now, Weiss and Ruby's first class that day was Professor Port's lecture at 10:00, so there wasn't any _reason_ to get up early. Even breakfast was hardly an attraction; hearty morning meals were for people who were actually awake enough to operate a fork, so Weiss was not at all _upset_ that it was quarter past nine.

But it was _strange._

She was just getting out of bed to investigate this phenomenon (and because there was no coffee within arm's reach), when the door swung open and Yang sauntered in.

"Hey, Weiss, still not dressed?"

Ordinarily, Weiss would have responded to the perceived slight with a snarky comment, but she was still too confused to really focus on her impeccable interpersonal skills.

"I just got up. Do you know where Ruby is?"

"I'm right here, Weiss."

The voice was hoarse and almost guttural, the words slow and drawn out, completely unlike Ruby's normal high-pitched chirping. But it _was_ emanating from behind the pink curtain surrounding Ruby's bed.

"Ruby? Is that you? Why are you still in bed? Breakfast ended over an hour ago!"

"I…don't feel too good, Weiss. I don't think I'm going to make it in to Professor Port's lecture this morning. Can…can I copy your notes?"

"Of course you can, but Ruby, that isn't the important thing. What about _you_? Are you okay? Do I need to get the nurse? What are your symptoms?"

"Those are good questions," Yang said, stepping over to her desk and picking up a polished chunk of yellow-brown rock she used as a paperweight. She weighed it in her hand, getting the balance of it, while saying, "Now, if you ask me, my best guess is Ruby's got a bad case of faking it."

With those words, Yang fired a fastball pitch at the ceiling.

It will be noted that the arrangement of ropes and knots that held Ruby's bed suspended over Weiss's basically all depended on a single peg embedded in the ceiling to hold it up. From a construction standpoint, it was really surprising that Weiss could get to sleep at all. Nonetheless, the peg was very strong and seemingly capable of bearing several times the vertical force brought to bear on it by the weight of the bed, Ruby, books, and possibly a small hippopotamus if Ruby ever got the taste for exotic pets.

The _horizontal_ force of, say, a five-pound rock smashing into its side at high velocity, that was a different story.

The pin was jarred sideways, wrenched free of the ceiling, and Ruby Rose suddenly found herself moving in a sharply downward direction.

"Gahhhhh!"

Weiss winced as the bed crashed noisily onto hers, spilling a fully-dressed Ruby out onto the floor.

_I'm really glad that Aura protects against hearing loss._

It was in that spirit that Weiss chose her tone of voice to respond to what had happened.

"What is _wrong_ with you? Do you realize how much _damage_ you could have done?"

"Hey, hey, hold off there," Yang said, holding her hands up placatingly. "Remember? Aura? You two fell a couple of hundred feet off of a giant flying Grimm a few weeks back. A three-foot drop, with a soft mattress under her, isn't going to hurt anything. Except for my little sister's irresponsible attempt to skip class with an act that seriously hasn't fooled me since she was eight…without a good reason that involves her team having fun."

"But he's so _boring_," Ruby moaned. "And Weiss gets mad at me if I don't just sit and pay attention!"

"I wasn't talking about _Ruby_," Weiss snapped, and even if she had been she certainly wasn't _now_ that her character had been attacked. "I'm talking about my bed, which definitely does not have an Aura and which has just had another bed dropped on it. I am _not_ going to end up camping on the floor tonight because of you two dolts!"

"Um…" Yang stammered.

"_Well?_"

And so it came to pass that Weiss ended up taking notes on Professor Port's lecture for an absent Ruby after all. Indeed, she also had to let Yang copy them as well. As for the Rose-Xiao Long sisters, they spent the hour engaging in a variety of cleaning, carpentry, furniture repair, and interior decorating activities, that Yang definitely did not consider to be a fun sisterly bonding episode.

For her part, Ruby still enjoyed it more than going to class, so she counted "Operation Sick Day" as a complete success.


	2. He's Also a Gun?

**Omake Week 2015, Day 5: ** _My only other _RWBY _omake was done last year for Omake Week as well. This almost counts as tradition, now!_

~X X X~

_A/N: This story takes place in the same steampunk AU as my novels, _Burning Gold_ and _Belladonna Lilies_. In fact, it takes place not long after _Burning Gold_ and will contain some spoilers for that, so you probably ought to read that one first, if you care about things like that!_

_~ 1889 ~_

Yang Xiao Long was one of the most courageous women in England. She routinely threw herself into potentially lethal combat against desperate criminals in her work as a huntress. She'd fallen from an exploding airship into the Thames and had reacted by looking into parachute-jumping as a sport. Nor was her bravery limited to the physical, living as she did a happy life on her own terms in Queen Victoria's England despite being female, born out of wedlock, and of mixed racial heritage.

That she was still hesitant to descend the stairs into the cellars of her father's home was one of those things detectives referred to as a clue.

"Um, Ruby?" she called with very uncharacteristic timidity. "Is it safe to come down?"

"Of course it is—ah! Zwei, stay out of the crimson Dust! You don't want to turn yourself into a fireball!"

That enheartening message just proved Yang's courage, as she went down anyway into her younger half-sister's workshop. Ruby Rose was nineteen and an aspiring huntress herself. Unlike Yang, she was also fascinated by the technology used in the profession, tools and gadgets and most especially weapons. The cellar was her domain, where she put together much of what she used in her jobs. This included Steel Thorn, her prized staff-voulge-boltgun-whatever that had been destroyed trying to capture the notorious Phantom Gentleman on her last job.

As Yang stepped off the last riser, Ruby was picking a plump corgi off one of the workbenches.

"You don't want to be a literal firedog, do you, Zwei?"

The corgi yipped and licked Ruby on the nose, making her giggle.

"You know, it's really too bad we can't think of a way to rig you out for that. You could take down baddies and giant automata and everything by shooting fire at them. But you'd have to wear some kind of fireproofing and you probably wouldn't like that."

"Dad wouldn't like you setting the dog on fire, Ruby."

"I wouldn't do that! Zwei just wants to help be a hunter, too, don't you, Zwei?"

Zwei yipped again and favored his humans with a doggy grin before Ruby set him down.

"See?"

"Yeah, he's one of the family, all right. So how's it going with the redesign?"

Ruby sighed.

"Not great. I've got the basic design for the shaft and blade done. It's collapsible, of course, and I'm using case-hardened steel for the barrel; one of the Schnee companies introduced a new process last year that improves the material strength by a third, which is especially important because _being_ collapsible will build weaknesses right into the design from the start. My problem is, I want to make it a proper gun, not just for shooting specialty Dust cartridges."

"That's what you meant when you said you wanted a rifle?"

"Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm not the biggest girl, so I like a weapon with reach to help keep me out of close clashes, and that gives me the potential barrel length for a long gun. Though, I'm also thinking of making it able to fire in partly collapsed mode. You know, like a carbine?"

Yang chuckled at her sister's enthusiasm.

"Where does that leave room for the blade, if you're going to shoot down the full barrel length?"

"Mounted on the outside. I think I mentioned that before, back when we were rehashing the Torchwick case?"

Yang grinned sheepishly.

"You know me, Ruby. I just come up with ideas and then let an armorer put them together if they need complex work."

Ruby sighed, shaking her head.

"I've never understood that, Yang. Our weapons aren't just tools, they're an extension of ourselves. If you don't make it with your own hands, how can you really feel at one with it?"

"Hey, I make my own ammunition," Yang protested. "I just don't need seventeen trick functions to punch people and shoot things."

"I have never had a weapon that had seventeen modes."

"You'd sound a lot more persuasive if you didn't say that like you regretted it."

"If you cannot appreciate the finer points of weapon design," Ruby said primly, "then what are you doing down here?"

"I wanted to show you this."

She took a folded newspaper from under her arm and extended it to Ruby.

"Oh? What's the—ah! Look what it says, Yang! 'Dr. Pyrrha Nikos, the renowned archaeologist, will host the grand opening of the new Egyptian Gallery at the Exham University Museum of Antiquity. Dr. Nikos's excavation of the tomb of Imhotep, architect of the first pyramid, will form the core of the initial display, which has already drawn the envy of scholars from the British Museum.' It opens this Tuesday, Yang!" Ruby caroled, starry-eyed. "We _have_ to go see the exhibit."

Chuckling again at her sister's enthusiasm, Yang shook her head.

"I swear, Ruby, you're almost as excited over Dr. Nikos as you are for weapons."

"Well, of course! She's barely older than you are, and she's gone all over the world, into places that most Europeans can't find on a map because the maps don't show them at all, and she's discovered so many things…she's amazing! Since she's been at Exham, she won the Mistral Prize for Scientific Excellence _four years running_. No one's ever done that before!"

"Then in that case, I guess you'll want these, huh?"

She flipped an envelope to Ruby, who didn't let go of the newspaper in time to grab it cleanly. Zwei, though, snatched it out of the air, then hopped up on his hind legs, front paws on her knee, to hand it up to her.

"What's this?"

"Open it and see."

Ruby broke the seal.

"Oh, my God! Yang, these are two invitations to Tuesday's reception!"

"I thought you'd appreciate it."

"But how did you get them?"

Yang smirked.

"Remember last year, when I caught those art smugglers? Turns out they'd swapped four statues for forgeries out of the Museum of Antiquity. I got them back and kept it quiet, so the curator owed me one."

"And one day I, too, shall be a famous huntress whose work entitles me to entry into all kinds of events. But for now, I shall happily enjoy the benefits of my sister's fame, even if it means I need to suffer through a fitting for a new dress. What are you going to wear, Yang?"

"Me? I'm not going."

"But there are two invitations here."

"I thought you might want an escort or a friend along, someone you can talk to when you're not listening to Dr. Nikos's speech." Though Ruby had the pedigree to go about in Polite Society, she tended to turn into a wallflower when left to her own devices, and Yang definitely wanted her to work on getting out of that shell. A huntress needed confidence even in situations where a weapon wasn't the appropriate vehicle for social interaction.

"I suppose I could ask Jaune. He might enjoy listening to Dr. Nikos," Ruby mused. "I still wish you'd come along."

"Oh, you'll be fine. Just remember not to throw wine on the guest of honor this time."

"That's only happened once and it was an accident, anyway!"

"Just so long as the Schnees don't bill you for the Snow Princess's birthday gown."

Ruby scowled at her.

"Just why don't you want to go, anyway?"

Yang waved a hand dismissively.

"Come on, all that archaeology stuff doesn't interest me. It's just a bunch of what dead people did three thousand years ago. All the actual exploring and investigating and digging they do to find the stuff is pretty exciting, but looking at it in a museum? I mean, a mummy is just a fancily dressed corpse. Oh, but hey! Maybe you don't need to get a new dress after all. If you finish your new weapon in time, you could wear your huntress outfit."

"Is this some side effect from the head injury? I think I just hallucinated you saying that I should wear my work clothes to a fashionable museum opening."

"Well, sure! You said that the blade on this was going to be a scythe, didn't you? Well, with that and your hood, you'll fit right in with all the mummies!"

It may not have been on fire, but the corgi Yang took to the face suggested that Ruby hadn't completely abandoned the Zwei-as-projectile idea.


	3. Who's Most Skeptical of All?

_A/N: Yes, I wrote another one of these, and it's not even Omake Week!_

~X X X~

It was a beautiful day in the kingdom of Vale.

Or at least it had been when the four girls that made up the members of Team RWBY went out into the city. Somewhere between the Cookie Monster's Den and Wellman's Book Emporium ("We Still Have Everything, Despite Being Under New Management!"), gray clouds had rolled in and it was revealed that none of the girls had checked the weather reports. A half-hour later, the floodgates opened and their walk to Sashes'N'Such was cut off by the need to duck into the nearest open shop to escape the downpour. Four girls and one dog found themselves dripping on the carpet in the lobby of Casbah-in-a-Box ("Vacuo's Largest Department Store Chain").

"Well, that was a thing," Yang decided, wiping streaming water out of her eyes with the back of her hand. "Do they sell towels here?"

Zwei decided to take his own steps against the rain and shook vigorously, spraying water in every direction. Blake flinched away from the bonus shower.

"Don't you think I'm wet enough already?"

"You know, if you keep up with the cat jokes, Blake, you're just going to end up stereotyping yourself," Yang pointed out. Blake moved her sack of canned tuna behind her back.

"How long do you think this will last, anyway?" Ruby wondered, looking out through the panoramic glass walls. There wasn't any thunder and lightning, thankfully, nor even a lot of wind, but there didn't really have to be when there was enough rainfall that passing cars kicked up six-foot waves.

"I don't know, sis. It looks pretty bad."

Weiss pulled out her scroll and opened it up. A couple of quick taps and swipes brought her to the Vale weather forecast.

"According to this, the rain is going to last until sometime after six this evening."

"That's four hours from now!"

"I don't think even Yang could shop here for four hours without getting bored," Blake said. Revenge was a dish best served with a side order of snark.

"Forget the shopping; I need to finish up my paper for Dr. Oobleck's class. If I can't write it this afternoon, I'll be up all night!" Ruby exclaimed.

"You _still_ haven't written that?"

"Well, Weiss, some of us don't write ten-page essays on the night they're assigned. Right, Yang?"

"Okay, yeah, but I _did_ finish mine yesterday. I wanted to make sure we had time to have fun in town today without any pressure."

"Traitor."

Zwei, who liked Dr. Oobleck, yipped once at Ruby.

"Even _you_?"

"A good leader should set an example for her team," Weiss noted primly.

Ruby sighed.

"I guess there's nothing for it but to get wet. My meringues are going to melt."

"Don't be so dramatic," Weiss advised. "We can just buy some umbrellas."

Blake decided that an idea to stay dry made up for stealing one of her lines, and nodded in agreement.

"Gotcha! I'll be right back," Yang said, and darted into the store. She returned in five minutes carrying two massive umbrellas, one with blue and white stripes and one with black and yellow.

"Two?"

"Yeah, they were on sale." She tossed the blue-and-white one to Weiss. "They're kinda huge, so there's plenty of room for two of us under each one."

"Well, then, there's no reason to wait," Weiss decided. She stripped off the plastic sleeve, then slipped her hand under the umbrella to push it open.

"Wait, Weiss, it's bad luck to open an umbrella indoors!" Ruby called, scooping up Zwei before scurrying up behind her partner.

"Bad _luck_!"

"Yeah, you know. Like walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror. You'll be sure to lose your history paper or get mud sprayed on your skirt by a passing car or something."

Weiss sniffed.

"I hardly think it's appropriate to concern myself with the superstitions of commoners."

"But—"

"And furthermore, no partner of mine is going to hold herself hostage to those silly folk beliefs. Now, come along, Ruby."

She pushed the umbrella open while heading for the door; it really was large enough for the two of them to walk comfortably underneath without even having to snuggle close. That was probably why it had been on sale, as most people who bought two-person umbrellas were couples who _wanted_ an excuse for snuggling.

It was so large, in fact, that the automatic front doors of the department store couldn't open fast enough to accommodate it while Weiss walked briskly towards them. Both edges crashed into a door and bounced back, making Weiss jolt to a halt. Ruby, already dashing to catch up, didn't have time to stop and crashed into her partner's back. They went over in a tangle of arms and legs, Zwei spinning through the air to land squarely on Weiss's face.

For a long minute, there was no sound other than the crunching noise of the dog helping himself to a spilled cookie.

"You know, Weiss," Blake finally commented, "there's a lot of practical purpose underlying most of those common folk superstitions."

"…Do…tell…"

~X X X~

_A/N: …I wonder if stealing a line counts as more Schnee Dust Company oppression of the Faunus?_

_Trying to fit an open umbrella through a door, particularly if that umbrella is large enough to provide decent coverage, is one of the great irritants of life, and pretty much demands standing out in the rain for a few seconds while opening and closing the umbrella if the place you're leaving or going to doesn't have a sheltered outdoor area like an awning outside the door._

_I admit, I'm cribbing somewhat off my own work, here, in that there's a chapter in _Tales of the Guild Bar_ where a character ends up coming to grief by going against a superstition and finding that it in fact has practical consequences. Of course, that had a different superstition and a different outcome, but the principal is similar. But I doubt I'll run into accusations of being unoriginal because nobody reads my _Phantasy Star_ fanfiction, anyway! So, there!_


	4. A Black Sox Scandal

_A/N: In celebration of _RWBY_ Volume 3 starting tomorrow!_

~X X X~

Ruby Rose walked—well, "staggered" would have been a better verb—into her team's dorm room and collapsed onto Weiss's bed, her feet dangling over the edge.

"Uggggh," was her inarticulate yet concise summation.

"Wow, rough meeting, sis?" asked the room's only other non-canine occupant, Ruby's sister Yang. "Must be, if you don't even have the strength to climb into your own bed."

"Why didn't I pick the lower bunk?"

"'Cause with our engineering skills, it's definitely safer to be the one falling instead of the one landed on."

"I'm not sure I'd notice at this point."

Yang swiveled in her desk chair, genuinely curious now, and not just because her baby sister's travails were more interesting than the essay she was writing for Professor Port.

"I thought you were at some special strategy and tactics class for team leaders?" she asked.

"I was."

"So why do you look like a rhino used you for a treadmill?"

"Ms. Goodwitch made us take turns playing out various scenarios and our reactions to them. And she had Team CFVY playing the opposition. I never liked makeup before and I am now sure it is the devil!"

"One too many bags to the face?"

"I think the bag took it personally."

"Did you learn anything?"

"Floors are hard? No, seriously, it was actually pretty good. Keeping track of a whole team and its capabilities in battle and directing the right people to the right job is complicated."

Yang smirked.

"That's why I'm happy you got to be the boss. Just throw me at whatever needs hitting and I'll punch it in the face."

"You're a woman of elegant tastes, Yang."

"Of course! Hey, take your boots off and I'll give you a footrub."

"Thanks. Yatsuhashi stomped on my foot and pinned me in place while he hit me with that giant cleaver of his. I'm not sure I still have toes."

Groaning, Ruby managed to push herself upright, then bent over and began to undo her bootlaces. The boots came off with a pop and thunked onto the floor, barely missing the tail of a sleeping corgi.

Sorry, Zwei," she said when he woke up with a startled yip. He regarded her carefully for a few seconds, then judged that she was sufficiently contrite and gave her a friendly bark and a doggy grin.

"Okay, then, I'll come over and you can put your feet in my lap while my magic fingers get to work." Yang cracked her knuckles as she got up. Ruby swung herself up onto the bed, and that's when Yang saw it. "Wait a second. You've got holes in your socks."

"What? N-no, I don't," Ruby stammered, yanking off the offending garments without even disturbing the stirrups of her tights.

"Yes, you do. Your little toenail monsters have been chewing at them for a while, by the looks of it."

"I do not have toenail monsters!"

"That one's got two holes! What, did you start wearing it on the other foot until both big toes had a snack?"

"I…nnnoooo…"

"Come on, hand 'em over and I'll sew 'em up for you."

"Y-you don't have to do that," Ruby stammered.

"And what would Dad say?" Yang pointed out, calling to mind numerous childhood lectures about his rambunctious daughters' habit of damaging their clothing.

"Dad isn't here. And I don't like wearing darned socks. The sewing makes the fabric all clumpy and they feel weird on my toes. You don't want your team leader thinking about her feet during battle, do you?" Ruby tried hopefully.

Hope was not to be rewarded.

"Hand over the socks, sis. Unless you want to throw them out and buy new ones—or just stop getting stirrup tights and start getting the kind with feet," Yang ordered, fully aware that Ruby had spent the last of her allowance on cookies the day before.

"No! And hey, I _am_ the team leader, so that means _you_ have to do what _I_—"

She never even got to finish the sentence, because Yang used her momentary distraction to snatch a sock free.

"I'll do this one first, since it's got two holes to fix."

"Noooooo!"

Ruby proved the value of motivation, then, as despite her exhaustion she became a blur of movement and rose petals as she shot across the room to grab the sock before Yang could react and pull it out of reach.

Speed, though, did nothing to make Yang let go of the other end.

"Give it back!"

"You're going to give yourself blisters and you know it."

"I can't fight with clumpy toes!"

"You can't fight with hurt feet, either!"

"Let go; it's going to rip!"

"They you'll just have to get new ones!"

"Graaaah!"

"Arrrrrrgh!"

Shouting, they both yanked backwards at once. The sock held. Their footing didn't, and they crashed over onto the floor, still wrestling and pulling for control of the sock. Zwei jumped to his feet and started barking enthusiastically, apparently as much of an aficionado of games of tug as a spectator as he was as a player. The fight and the din were so intense that none of the three of them noticed the soft clicks of the door opening and closing.

In fact, it wasn't until two minutes later that a particularly hard pull by Yang sent her shoulders skidding to bump into a pair of shins. She looked up into the eyes of her partner, Blake Belladonna. Well, the eyes and the camera lens of Blake's scroll.

"Um, er, we can explain, Blake."

"No, no, keep on with your sock tug'o'war. But I'm going to save this video for the next time someone makes a joke about me acting like a cat."


	5. Why Huntresses Attend Finishing School

**Omake Week 2016, Day 1:** _Well, that whole "omake week" thing worked out well the last two years, so let's do this again! This time, we're kicking things off with something from _RWBY_, mostly because it's what I've spent the largest amount of pencil lead on this year.__ This omake takes place in the Victorian steampunk AU that my longer stories, _Belladonna Lilies_ and _Burning Gold_ exist in, like the second chapter of this collection. For the curious, a "guinea" is a gold coin of the era worth 21 shillings (a pound being 20 shillings). I do wonder how many people in the _RWBY_ fandom will get the final joke, though..._

~X X X~

Being a bounty hunter took Yang Xiao Long to some of the most interesting sights in London, from bustling markets to Gothic mansions to the clock face of Big Ben to an airship ride over the Thames (albeit not actually from on board the airship). It was, she had often said, a life of romantic and picturesque adventure.

"Eew, it smells like fish," was her sister's opinion.

"Well, yeah. These are the Limehouse fish markets."

"And we have to be here why?"

"Because the Schnee Dust Company's motor-carriage division just introduced a new invention: a bicycle that's driven by a Dust-powered steam engine of speeds up to thirty miles per hour on flat roads. My share of the two-hundred-guinea bounty on Warren Burgundy put up by the victims of his assorted robberies, forgeries, and safe-breakings will give me just enough cash to buy one without having to tap my emergency stash. I wonder if they come in yellow?"

"Okay, but isn't there a less smelly way to earn a hundred pounds?"

"Probably, but not in the next hour. And quit complaining, sis. Think of all the gun parts it could buy you."

Some girls' eyes went starry over diamonds. Ruby Rose's gleamed at the thought of a hundred guineas' worth of precision crafting tools that would enable her to custom-build ammunition for Crescent Rose, her new pet weapon.

"I figured that would do it. C'mon, he ran this way. The street's a dead end, so we've got him cornered. Unless he jumped down the sewer or something."

"No gun is worth that," Ruby said flatly, and Yang was not inclined to argue. The last time she'd gone slogging through the sewers on a job it had taken six solid hours of scrubbing to get the smell out of her hair.

They turned up the lane, which was well-packed with people: locals shipping for the night's dinner and servants from the city's great mansions seeking something exotic for their masters' table. They wound their way among rows of stalls, where fish were displayed on drying racks, on tables, stuffed in bins, or, at upscale sellers, in beds of ice made possible by azure Dust. Yang could see why Burgundy had gone this way. The crowd would make it easy for him to slip into a hiding place while everyone was focused on their own business, and it would be impossible to make a thorough search without making several dozen people furious with them.

"This is going to be trouble," Ruby said, looking up and down the lane.

"Nah. Piece of crab cake," Yang said, and pointed to a trio of barrels alongside one stall. These barrels weren't heaped with fish; their tarred seams revealed they were used to hold live fish in water for customers who demanded only the freshest. A herring flopped on the wet cobbles next to the rearmost barrel. "You want to do the honors? You've got the hook, after all."

Ruby smirked and reached behind herself as they strolled over to the barrels. From over her shoulder she drew the three-foot pole she'd had strapped to her back. The upper two feet were built-up and blocky with a metal wedge like a club, but Crescent Rose soon proved itself to be something quite different as Ruby twisted a section of the handle to unlock it and the weapon unfolded, the collapsible haft extending to double its length, while the wedge unfolded, segments reassembling themselves and locking into place as a massive, curved blade.

The stall owner and four customers in line stared at the petite girl with the giant scythe, jaws slack.

"It's also a gun," Ruby said proudly, not _quite_ understanding the reason for their amazement.

"H-hey, what are you doing?" babbled the stall owner as Ruby peered into a barrel, then dipped the first foot or so of Crescent Rose's blade into the water.

"Just a bit of fishing," Yang said.

"Urf! A little help, here," Ruby said, pulling on Crescent Rose's shaft.

"Having trouble landing the big one, eh?" Yang grabbed the scythe handle and the two of them succeeded in hauling up their catch by main force, yanking a mustachioed man in a tweed coat out of the barrel, the scythe having hooked into his collar.

The hollow tube he'd been breathing through was still clenched between his teeth, and he had to spit it out before cursing, "Damn it!" He followed up with a few other remarks in hearty Anglo-Saxon before finishing with, "How did you manage to spot me?"

Yang rescued the fish from the cobbles, dropping it back into the barrel while Ruby put handcuffs on the prisoner.

"Oh, come on, it was obvious. Even I know that Burgundy doesn't go with fish."


	6. A Fetching Tale

**Omake Week 2016, Day 7:** _And we finish off with another entry from _RWBY_. Of course, since now that RT is doing _RWBY Chibi_, there's an official omake collection out there and animated besides. I envy them!_

~X X X~

Weiss Schnee held Myrtenaster up before her face, eyes closed, concentrating as she summoned her glyph. The ornate snowflake pattern took shape in glowing white on the ground before her, its power building...building...until her eyes snapped open and with a sweep of the rapier she released the glyph's energy, force bursting upwards.

The small rubber ball launched itself high into the air, arcing up and out, the bell inside it jingling all the way.

"Goooo get it!" Weiss caroled, and Zwei the corgi took off running, yipping enthusiastically. His new friend was _really good_ at throwing his ball for games of fetch!

"So, is this what they call 'training' in Atlas?" a voice drawled from behind Weiss's left shoulder.

"Gah! Yang Xiao Long, how _dare_ you sneak up on people when they're trying to focus?"

"Focus on watching the dog run across the lawn?"

"It is not my fault," Weiss began archly, "that Zwei makes for a compelling picture to watch as he runs..." She then lost her aplomb completely. "His widdle legs are so cute when he's sprinting like that!"

"Um. Okay." Yang rubbed the back of her head. "Anyway, I just came out to tell you that Ruby was looking for you. Something about the refrigerator being broken and needing an ice cube?"

Zwei came rushing back with the ball.

"Hey, boy, good running there!" Yang said. Zwei dropped the ball at Yang's feet and gave a yip.

"Traitor," Weiss muttered.

"Hey, don't take it so hard." Yang picked up the ball and hurled it in a high, arcing throw that looked like it would cover about half the distance of Weiss's. "He's probably just getting tired and didn't want to run as far. You've been out here for half an hour."

"That long?"

"Yeah. Playing with the dog kind of eats time."

"Oh." Weiss had not had a dog when she was a child, yet another thing that her time at Beacon was allowing her to belatedly catch up on. "I can understand that."

Zwei brought the ball back and gave it to Weiss this time, possibly sympathizing with her sudden, pensive expression. Weiss didn't use a glyph this time, but threw the ball normally. She got maybe two-thirds of Yang's distance.

"Well, it's good that he's making new friends. I wish he got along better with Blake, though at least I can save up more cat jokes, so that's something."

"I have to ask, though, how come he's called Zwei? It seems an unusual choice for his name. Is he the second pup from his litter?"

"What? Oh, nah. Actually, he's the third. But after all the trouble Dad had housebreaking him, there was no way we were going to call him Drei."


End file.
